Increase in UF Students Seeking Counseling

Published September 10th, 2012

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GAINESVILLE - Classes are underway and many UF students are stressed out. University officials say they're seeing an increase of students asking for help. UF Counseling officials say they've seen a big jump in students asking for assistance. They couldn't really pinpoint what exactly is behind the significant increase but say they're seeing a trend.

UF Sophomore and soccer player Jennifer Larrick is familiar with stress.

"Just pile on top of playing time, good practices, bad practices," Jennifer Larrick, UF Sophomore said.

Larrick is also familiar with getting help at the UF Counseling and Wellness Center

""It was good it was personal they treated everyone respectfully," Larrick said.

Officials say they've seen a 60 percent jump of students getting help compared to this time last year, they say it could be a number of things but they do see a trend, a trend of students coming in and reporting abuse.

"The biggest trend is that there was a pretty dramatic increase with the number of students coming and presenting problems related to abuse and trauma in the past," Sherry Benton, Director of the UF Counseling and Wellness Center.

Benton says more juniors, seniors, and graduate professionals are those who are seeking help. Benton thinks part of the reason is because of the media coverage of current events like shootings and most recently the Penn State Sex Abuse Case.

"What happens is that kind of news of drama stirs up people's old traumas and if they still have feelings about those," Benton said.

Benton said other factors for the jump is more media attention to get help, to deal with the jump officials at the UF Counseling and Wellness Center say they have group threapy sessions to help as many students as possible.